“Materium, ensconced within Nethernum and Etherium, is variably known as the Cosmic Wall, the Planar Partition, the Wall of Souls, and so forth; but it is not a complete divide. Whilst discussion of distances on dimensional scales might easily veer into circuitous conjecture and argumentation ad infinitum qua infinitum, this is quite unnecessary for the beginner seeking pertinent facts. Suffice to say, there are those frontiers upon which Celestium and Infernum meet, and the forces of Light and Dark also; and though these wild borderlands might vanish into insignificance when compared with the great firmament of the Cosmic Wall, to call them aught less than infinite would also miss the mark.”
It wasn’t even five in the morning, still looking like the middle of the night outside the windows, and yet me and Em were hardly the only magic-users with their heads buried in books – there had to be almost fifty of us scattered across the library’s chairs, almost without exception sitting alone, reading alone. Even me and Em were ten feet apart, at different tables, volumes roughly similar in appearance but completely different in nature piled up in front of each of us.
She had mandatory homework. I had no such excuse, but no less desire to learn than she. I’d switched to my current text once the treatise on the comings and goings of eolastyr had started to put me to sleep: the heavy book listing the works of the tigresses was far too detailed. It seemed these Weavers of Woe (or Mistresses of Time, or Weavers of Time – the translations were muddy) had been plying their crafts down the centuries. Apparently eolastyr often answered the rituals of cultists of Mekesta, Wyrda and Yane, and they always outstayed their welcome once they’d been summoned. Dangerous, especially for the sorcerer or priest whose force bound them to Materium; eolastyr didn’t typically like to return to Infernum until their patron was drained dry and dead. Until the book started to repeat itself it’d been quite interesting, but one could only read so many charts of required ritual components without nodding off.
Those aside, there’d hardly been a paragraph I’d read so far that didn’t appeal to some facet of my will, my desire, my hidden self – drawing my attention this way one minute then another the next, my wildest imaginings seeping out of the arcane pages like the fabled Ink of Dreams. I felt lucky, in spite of everything that came along with it – to have been made an archmage, to have been given this opportunity to enter this world of magic and master it.
Not that I didn’t have more important things to be doing, obviously, but she had homework, and I was hardly getting bored keeping her company in this place of wonders for a few hours. I wouldn’t see her all day otherwise.
“Pssst,” I whispered, looking over at her.
She raised her eyes to mine and I mouthed to her: “You – look – cute – when – you’re – studying.”
She mouthed back, with a confused toss of her head: “What?”
“When – you’re – reading.” I mimed a book opening and closing. “You – look –“ I pointed to her then to my eye, “cute.”
“Hoof?” she mouthed.
“Never – mind.”
She seemed to get the message, though; I caught her glancing over at me several times in the next ten minutes, biting her lower lip, and it was only confirmed when she led me into the shadows of the shelves for a protracted expedition in search of a strangely-elusive book. By the time we returned she was no longer in the mood for her project and I flew her home, after a quick stop-off at our usual haunt, the bowers of Treetown that were just as warm and bright as any lord’s chamber, whatever the time of night or morning found us there.
* * *
“Ooooh, Em, you’re getting flanked,” Sol pointed out. The druidess’s finger indicated a space near my girlfriend’s Northern Hold. “Your rear’s undefended.”
“Ba-ha!” Bor set down his flagon of mead so he didn’t spill any while he laughed. “Good to hear!”
“Her rear is totally defended,” I said icily to my teammate. “Don’t even think of it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, mate,” the enchanter replied, elbowing me only slightly too-roughly.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Boys…” Em chided us gently, then looked at her teammate. “Please use the link, Sol.”
Sol grinned.
“You keep doing that and I’ll go wraith next time, make you fall off your stool,” I warned Bor, rubbing my arm where his elbow connected. It didn’t actually hurt, but it reminded me that I needed to join with my satyr again; I’d granted them both leave for a while, seeing as they had this big tournament in the court of the King of Yellow Flowers to attend, but that should’ve all long-since come to an end by now.
“Oooooh, bogeyman!” Bor snickered at me.
“And don’t say dream,” I muttered, moving my Geomancer east, towards Em and Sol’s forces.
“Anyway, Em, ignore her,” Bor said. “You don’t need to defend your Northern Hold – look what Kas choosin’ a Geomancer has done to our side of the field!”
“So what if I wanted to grow some mountain ranges?”
“I think your mountain ranges are very pretty, Kas.” Em managed to not even sound particularly gloating when she spoke.
“Pretty n’ useless,” Bor said, hefting his mead again.
“So it’s going about as well for you as last time, is it?” Jo asked me from the adjoining table where she and Irimar were facing off against Tanra and Neko.
I spread my hands at the gleaming little fortify board, the tokens like small coins representing my newly-created mountains. “I just don’t understand the point of the Geomancer if he sucks this badly!” I didn’t try to contain my distress. “Every time I practice with him at home it works perfectly…”
“Aww, poor Kas,” the enchantress mocked me, moving her Swamp Hag to defeat one of Neko’s pieces. “If only your opponents were imaginary, like when you practice…”
“I practice against the twins, I’d have you know.”
“Nine year olds,” Em supplied in a solemn whisper.
I managed to laugh along with the others, even if it was at my own expense.
This was our third competition night, and I’d only won on the first, when it was me and Em against Neko and Bor. The little old gnome had a keen eye when he was on the defensive but his offensive game was terrible and Bor’s skills were certainly no greater than my own. I was slightly ashamed to admit it but despite this it was only due to a timely intervention from Em that we scored a victory.
Now that it was me and Bor on a team, with Em and Sol against us, the druidess’s plan of attack as sharp as her tiger-form’s claws, we didn’t stand a chance.
At least the purchase of the twin travel-sets of fortify wasn’t a waste. I’d come up with the idea (and the cash) last week, when everyone’s spirits had been at their lowest ebb, and taking an hour to sit in a corner of the Diamond Mare and forget about our combined failures had gone down as a resounding success. When we were out there, soaring aimlessly through the night sky following the latest lead of one of our diviners, we inevitably ended up despondent. Every trail Irimar and Tanra found turned cold in hours, whether our quarry was Nighteye, Duskdown or Dreamlaughter. Every hint Sol and Neko gathered from the gossip of plants and animals was a dead-end, a mistake, or, in one case, a trap. Jo and Bor hadn’t picked a single relevant thought out of a brain in weeks and me and Em had turned up nothing with our own abilities.
But I still had hope, and if I could help my friends evade the depths of despair by stubbornly picking the Geomancer over and over, by forcing them to spend time together that wasn’t being poured straight down the drain, I counted it as a win.
On the other table, Tanra was covering for Neko’s disadvantages by launching devastating assaults on both the Southern and Northern Holds belonging to Jo and Irimar, while the wily druid arranged his Master and Minions in a flawless rearguard. I could tell that Irimar was having trouble with Tanra. As an arch-diviner, I doubted he was used to playing ‘blind’, against another of his kind, but Tanra, who’d learned it quickly but had never played any other way, seemed to know how to circumvent all of Irimar’s plans. He’d only won their first game. Unfortunately for him, in order to take certain all-too-valid complaints of unfairness off the table, he was forced to go up against Tanra every single time he played – a fact she seemed to relish.
“D’ya think we still got a chance?” Bor asked me, using the private link that he and Jo had set up for each team to coordinate their tactics.
“I’m pretty sure even if one of us had diviner powers,” I replied, “all we’d be able to see by this point is our inevitable doom.”
Thirty minutes later, Em got her Master into one of our Holds and the game was over; Bor went to elbow me one last time and my sudden insubstantiality contributed, along with several strong meads, to the enchanter twisting off his stool and ending up on his ass. My “I told you so” was lost in everyone’s laughter.
We all settled in to watch the other match, but it only took Tanra ten more minutes to flood Irimar and Jo’s side of the board with powerful Minions. When she ignored the Northern Hold, her obvious target, instead slipping her Erudite Priest past Jo’s Swamp Hag and into the Southern Hold, many of us gasped and applauded. Even some of the nearby patrons of the Mare had evidently been watching, because they promptly joined in. Neko stood up on his stool and embraced Tanra, doing a little jig.
“I play you next,” Em said to her, and the seeress grinned back in response.
“When do I get a break?” Irimar moaned, not entirely good-naturedly.
Jo patted him sympathetically on the arm.
The very next night, under Tanra’s telepathic tuition, I finally got the Geomancer to work, and Em experienced her first defeat, Irimar hanging his head at her side.
* * *